Entrepreneur, father, and interactive software developer.

Joining Sencha: The Intersection of Applications and The Open Web

I am joining Sencha to build a world-class developer program but in a larger sense I am returning to the intersection of Applications and The Open Web. I wanted to share my thoughts on why I am returning to web technologies and highlight some industry trends that are rapidly driving change within the software industry.

I believe that we are witnessing a sea-change in the platforms upon which software is built and delivered. Long term, I believe all software will be built with web technologies across enterprise and consumer facing applications.

Here are a few trends driving this change:

1. Web Innovation – Browsers and the core fabric of web technologies are innovating rapidly again. CSS, JS, HTML are changing to enable running first class applications in the browser with no dependencies.

2. Web Performance – The performance of web technologies has eclipsed end user performance requirements. JavaScript performance has improved dramatically in the past 3 years and browser rendering performance is in most browsers now leveraging the GPU for rendering. Fast code and fast graphics are essential elements to building great end user experiences.

5. Native Capacity – Few companies have the team capacity to deliver native applications across multiple platforms successfully. I am seeing many developers leverage web technologies within native applications to simplify development and reuse existing content, servers, and services.

Now while the trends and market opportunity seems crystal clear, the reality is there are actually very few companies actively delivering “professional grade” web technology solutions that “just work”. Sencha stood out for me for a few reasons:

Interesting, after you announced leaving B&N, Sencha was one of my guesses. Internally, we have different feelings about the current state of HTML/JS. We exited development of HTML/JS frameworks about 6 years ago after developing similar environment with one major handicap – it would support one browser only. As JS/browsers caught up with functionality, Victor is pulling strongly toward ExtJS and I am looking for enterprise grade solutions over lighter frameworks. Can’t wait for your opinions/posts on the subject.
Sincerely,
Anatole